Taking Indie to Lvl Forty-2

MTG Deck Builder 2.0

We’re almost finished with MTG Deck Builder 2.0. One of the biggest changes we’re implementing moving forward is the shift to an entirely offline database. What does that mean? It means that it will be faster, you won’t need to search Gatherer for every card and it will work Offline right out of the box. No more lengthy downloads, the entire Gatherer card database [without art, upto M10] will be available instantly after the update. But this doesn’t mean the App is entirely offline, it will still use the internet to fetch art and download new sets that come out later. The art is downloaded in the background, automatically, as long as there’s an internet connection. And as always the art is automatically cached, so once you’ve seen a card it will always be available even offline.

We will detail the rest of the tweaks, changes, and new features as the update gets closer to release.

Will an entire offline mode result in even more “auto-exiting” of the program because it uses too much memory?

I have the new 3GS and it closes every two or three searches I do because it runs low on memory. Even after a hard reset..

Will it still support the complete offline art download function, like it does in 1.0? I like it and it’s one of the reasons I use this program.

The filter is useless I think, it doesn’t work. I’d rather see a advanced search option containing name, card text, type, color and so on

Don’t get me wrong, this is wonderfull software. but I don’t use that often because it feels a little buggy.
e.g. when I entered a decklist, all I needed to do was entering the lands and it auto closed on me.. when I restarted the program it was all gone..

The main reason for the “auto-exiting” and the slowness was because Gatherer was returning too many search results for MTG Deck Builder to handle and responding slowly to search requests. With MTG Deck Builder 2.0, Gatherer is not used for searches anymore so it will be more stable, less “auto-exiting” and searches will be faster.

You won’t be able to download art by itself in 2.0. But art will be fetched and saved automatically for every card you see. So if you search for a card, once that image loads in the search results, it’s been saved and will be available offline from that point on. If you add a card to your deck offline without art, next time you are online, just tap that card in your deck list and MTG Deck Builder will try to fetch the art again.

Currently filters only work for Online searches. Filters will work for offline mode in 2.0.

We hope 2.0 will make MTG Deck Builder more useful to everyone. And 2.0 is by no means our last release for MTG Deck Builder, we will continue to improve on existing features and add new ones.

We’ve completely reworked how offline cards are handled, without getting into technical details the changes resulted in a more robust database and much lower memory footprint. In addition, the search results are very similar to Gatherer now, the biggest difference is that AEther cards are at the bottom of search results instead of on top.

I can also confirm for you that scored ruins will show up when you search for “scorched ruins”.

Nice job I don’t get the autoexiting as much as before anymore. Scorched ruins things, I can confirm mine didn’t show scorched ruins..

May I point you a minor issue, when searching for planeswalkers and then tapping on one of them gives the wrong oracle text..
Like searching for Ajani Vengeant shows the oracle text “exalted”
Elspeth is actually (or at least has oracle text from) ELvish Visionairy.
I can confirm this as well
Any remedies?

I hope the “download all art” function returns, because it is THE reason I use the program. Being a judge and getting confronted with a lot of proxies lately, I want to show the players the original card with corrected Oracle text and not needing to run to a pc forthatreason. A lot of hassle if you know what I mean.

If you have an internet connection the art will be downloaded automatically for each card that you view, as you view it. Downloading all art currently is not a top priority however as we are focusing on adding more useful statistics and filters. For judging purposes you may want to look at MTG db, which can fetch real time Gatherer card information, price data and more.